Dead Giveaway

Heart-to-Heart, Hand-to-Hand

That night wasn't fun. Frisk was gently rocking back and forth on her bed. I could hear the gentle creak of her bedsprings. But she was silent. No noise. No whines or whimpers.

I sat up and pushed myself off the bed. I glanced at the alarm clock, which almost never actually had an alarm set. It was nearly 2 AM.

Frisk usually wasn't an insomniac. She slept well most nights. So something was up.

As the LED numbers rolled over from 1:56 to 1:57, I approached the bed and sat down gingerly on it, letting her register that someone had joined her.

When Frisk rolled over to see who had joined her, I saw she had been crying silently. Her wide blue eyes were glassy and streaked with tears. But still no noise.

"Can you tell me what's wrong?" I said gently.

Frisk said nothing. She buried her head in her knees and raised her left hand. She balled it into a fist and shook it side to head.

Sign language for no. I groaned inwardly. I knew what that meant.

When Frisk first fell, she never spoke. She was scared and in a new situation. She did know sign language though. How she knows it is up to her to tell. But I learned from being in her head.

Now whenever she's scared she tends to revert back to sign language.

"Why are you scared?" I asked her. I kept my voice low and cool.

She looked back up at me. Her tears were drying in sticky trails down her cheeks. I reached for the tissue box we keep on the bedside table and gently wiped her eyes.

She raised her hands and moved them rapidly. Her fingers flew into different shapes. I could really only pick up on about half the words, but I figured it out.

"Everything's happening fast. You're leaving. Were fighting. Mom is having twins. I'm overwhelmed."

I pulled her into my shoulder. "Listen to me Frisk". I said, dropping my voice into a whisper. "I am your big sister. I'm not going to leave you. You know what I am. I'm your ange gardien. And I'd be a pretty rotten one if I left you. You can count on that"

I looked back at the clock. 1:59.

Frisk cried gently into my shoulder. I held her and let her cry. We both needed emotional release from all this.

That didn't mean I was gonna give myself one but who was I to deprive my sister of hers?

As her crying calmed down, she pulled away. Red eyes met blue.

Red eyes on that face. Blue eyes. Glowing. Blue and yellow eye. Eyes. Blue. Bones. Flying. Gold squares. SHUT UP! This isn't about you!

I cleared my head of those thoughts and honed my sight in on Frisk's hands. They were flying through the air in different shapes again.

"Do you ever wonder if we picked the right side?"

I shook my head immediately. With full confidence. "No I don't. We picked the right side. The monsters have given us both better lives than we had before. You know that."

She nodded solemnly. "We were in bad places. Isn't that why we fell in the first place?"

I remembered the running. The straightjacket pinning my arms to my sides as I dashed to the base of the mountain. The sounds of sirens in the distance. And the fall.

"Yeah Frisk. That's why. We had some awful luck. But look where we are now"

She looked around. "In the middle of a war?"